Resolutions: Arts and Humanities

Discourage music agent Bob Lawton from selling Sonic Youth to property developers due to competition from Fiery Furnaces.

Keep the screenings coming.
With the loss of daily movies at the Academy of Music, and with the fate of Pleasant Street Theater still unclear (at least, at our deadline), we're pinning our hopes on ultra-indie cinema: renting a projector, finding a room, and sharing a film with anyone who'll show up.

Tim and Liz Jenks, who own Pick Your Flicks in Easthampton, recently screened the Sigur Ros documentary Heima at the Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton; over 70 people bought advance tickets. And over 40 people turned out for a screening of the film Contested Streets, hosted by Northamptonist blogger Paolo Mastrangelo at the Media Education Foundation community room.

There's demand for this type of community-oriented film experience, and we applaud the efforts of anyone working to keep this trend going in 2008.

Avoid using the following in music reviews:
Sonic; textural; sonic cocktail; with a sound uniquely their own; thundering; in turns both... ; jagged.

Pretty much just have Feist play in Northampton every week.

Begin phased withdrawal of twee, academic overtones from indie rock / film.
Sufjan Stevens had one good album, Seven Swans. This whole 50 states thing, with the flutes and the scouring microfiched newspapers for obscure local references? Avoid the sh*t out of it.